Radiohead's OK Computer marked a permanent tone shift in the alternative scene that still holds fast twenty years on. The band's third studio album was a deeply melancholic collection of morbid art rock anthems about consumerism, mass media, and the rise of the technocratic society, and drew from, among other sources, the Beatles and Krzysztof Penderecki, Jamaican dub, arena rock and musique concrete, dystopian sci-fi novels a la Philip K. Dick and Noam Chomsky's Manufactured Consent. The album bursts to life with "Airbag," (Canadians might recognize this song's reverberating opening chords as the intro to CBC radio's "Q") a hair-raising tune which kicks the album off with a first-person car crash narrated in Thom Yorke's eerie falsetto. OK Computer also contains two of the biggest hits and brightest lights in the Radiohead catalogue, "Karma Police" and "No Surprises." But make no mistake– this album is all highlights, and will have you reeling from start to finish. Essential is an understatement.

First listen: